[ampgt]

> but it’s something you aren’t offered in a lot of private sector jobs.

To an extent isn’t this because these types of benefits aren’t affordable? The pension, extra vacation, etc wouldn’t be possible without the tax revenue raised from your friends who are working more hours.

In America there is a saying “good enough for government work.” I think a lot of public sector jobs get a bad rep because they hand out middle class lifestyles (arguably maybe even upper middle class in Washington DC metro area) at the expense of the private sector.

A lot of government employees (and contractors) just got paid to sit at home for 3-4 months during the pandemic if they worked in secure areas (can’t take classified information home). That’s a benefit that the private sector just can’t provide.

I guess I don’t really agree with the article. We need hard work, it’s what keeps the system going. We have it so much better than other parts of the world and we shouldn’t take that for granted.

[Olreich]

> That’s a benefit that the private sector just can’t provide

They actually can. Businesses have a lot of profit that they pump directly into the hands of investors in the form of dividends and stock buy backs. They have massive capital expenditure projects. Many or all of these things could be put on hold or slowed so that cash-on-hand to handle expenses can be saved.

Business practices seem to say that saving money for a rainy day is a dumb move for the business, because profit is the only goal or money saved is wasted because it’s not doing anything productive. That line of thinking is just plain wrong. So much of the recessions that impacted so many and required massive government bailouts could have been prevented by increased cash-on-hand. The implication that you’ll go out of business guaranteed if you aren’t constantly investing in growth at the highest possible level is asinine.

[ampgt]

Fiduciary duty is to the shareholders. There is a misconception that you are not a shareholder. Do you have a 401k? A pension? Any investments? Everyone benefits, even if you're only getting a few dollars from the dividend payment.

Rates are at historical lows, sitting on piles of cash is bad business. Those massive capital expenditure projects are as cheap as ever.. the point is to encourage spending when the economy is struggling. If you want to blame someone you should blame the fed for years of artificially lowered rates.

[nicoburns]

> Fiduciary duty is to the shareholders. There is a misconception that you are not a shareholder.

You seem to have a misconception that fiduciary duty must be to shareholders. Plenty of people (although it's a lot more common in Europe than the US) hold the viewpoint that companies have a duty to their employees. IMO our economy would end up a lot more balanced if companies paid higher wages rather than passing that money on to shareholders.

[nybble41]

> You seem to have a misconception that fiduciary duty must be to shareholders.

Fiduciary duty for a public company is to the shareholders, by definition. The board and officers of the corporation serve as the agents of its owners, their principals, without whose investment the corporation would not exist. Of course there is usually some overlap between the shareholders and the employees, and the company has other kinds of duties toward its employees in the form of contracts as well as a less formal stake in employee retention and goodwill. If you want a co-op structure where the shareholders and the employees are one and the same, that sort of thing does exist and can sometimes work out reasonably well but there are some obvious trade-offs when it comes to raising capital. In particular you can't fund growth by selling equity, only by going into debt, which means the co-op and its shareholder-employees are taking on the lion's share of the risk if the venture should fail.

[nicoburns]

> Under the U.S. legal system, a fiduciary duty is a legal term describing the relationship between two parties that obligates one to act solely in the interest of the other

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042915/what-are-som...

As far as I'm aware fiduciary duty actually has a broad meaning as above. Of course under our current legal system, fiduciary duty is to shareholders. But there's no reason why we have to setup society like that.

Co-ops are a good way of organising things, but as you say they have downsides. But there are lots of in-betweens. For example, we could require that a proportion of the board (say 25%) are employees. The markets have shown that they are willing to invest a lot of moeny in companies like Facebook where preferential shares allow non-majority shareholders to retain control of the company.

[nybble41]

Going by your broader definition, then: If there are shareholders, and there is any kind of fiduciary duty at all, then it must be to the shareholders. The officers of the corporation cannot act solely in the interest of more than one master. If they must act solely in the interest of some other party with mostly opposing interests, such as the employees, then there will be no non-employee shareholders. It would defeat the point of holding an equity stake in the company.

The officers and board represent the shareholders because the shareholders own the company. The employees do not own the company. Their relationship to the company is transient at best; they have an ongoing and hopefully amicable relationship but no real stake in the company's future. Either side can terminate the employment contract at will with at most a few weeks' notice and some minor payout (or payback) of (un)accrued benefits. If a given employee wants to take an equity position in the company and obtain some influence and a portion of the profits they have only to purchase some shares, but in practice they would probably be better off investing that same money in a more diversified portfolio. I myself could hold a "democratic" share in my employer (market cap divided by number of employees) right now via my 401k if I put most or all of it in company stock, but I'd really rather not take that kind of risk.

[triceratops]

Companies have a lot of leeway in deciding how to execute their fiduciary duty. They can honestly say "We believe giving our rank-and-file employees generous benefits and compensation is good for the long-term health of the business." and it couldn't be challenged in court. Some companies do in fact operate that way; for example, Costco. They don't all have to operate the way they do because of "fiduciary duty".

[colinmhayes]

Executives that waste company money(that's what you're proposing) are quickly deposed. They literally can't do this.

[CaptArmchair]

The private sector doesn't just fund the public sector. It's a misconception to assume that this is a one way street.

Every dollar that is spend in the public sector flows into the private economy as well. For instance, the wages paid to civil servants and employees in the public sector ultimately gets spend in private businesses: food, clothes, entertainment, housing and so on. Public investments in public infrastructure also create wealth in the private sector: public procurement is a prime example, public funding and grants are another example. The there's the creation of value through education (schools & universities), ensuring security (law enforcement & justice), mobility (roads & bridges), health (hospitals),... which create the affordances for private enterprises to become successful (no Silicon Valley without skilled/schooled workers, right?)

Also, let's not forget that 'money' is above all a token of exchange that represents economic value, it's not the economic value proper. Government and the public sector aren't competing with the private sector: the primary goal is governing the distribution of wealth in society according to a prevailing economic framework or ideology, and managing the supply/volume of money in an economy is an important lever to do just that.

> A lot of government employees (and contractors) just got paid to sit at home for 3-4 months during the pandemic if they worked in secure areas (can’t take classified information home). That’s a benefit that the private sector just can’t provide.

No. But at the same time, unemployment benefits are in essence the public sector directly stepping in because the private sector runs out of liquidity.

> We need hard work

This is true. All of the above doesn't negate the work that happens in the private sector or private businesses. On the contrary. What we ought to remember is that value creation is equally, if note more, important as wealth creation.

Put differently, there's no point in gazing at the trillions of dollars that get shifted around if the entire discussion becomes detached from any tangible value which gets created and consumed. Whether it's the bread of the sandwich you ate for lunch, or whether it's the leather in the shoes you're wearing.

The thing that worries me more then discussing who gets an arbitrary amount of money and who doesn't, is supply chains, manufacturing, businesses,... all of that shuttering due to this health crisis. The one thing that truly drives people to the street and bloody riots is a scarcity of something as basic as wheat and bread.

[ampgt]

I appreciate your points. I should have re-read my post before I submitted. My intention wasn't to bash the public sector, but to try to point out some of the philosophical differences between the two.

[moksly]

> To an extent isn’t this because these types of benefits aren’t affordable? The pension, extra vacation, etc wouldn’t be possible without the tax revenue raised from your friends who are working more hours.

Not really. My terms are actually widely available in a lot of private sector jobs, just not in software development. If I was a HR consultant in a private company, I would have basically the same rights as I do now.

It’s because the rights come from unions, and being in the public sector as a software development puts you on the same category of unionisation that any other white collar public worker. So my rights are the same as anyone else in the administration.

Software development in the private sector never really unionised in Denmark. Partly. Because there was never really a need as there were always more jobs than developers.

There are a few private companies that try to attract developers with benefits, but the vast majority of them do it with money.

[bryanrasmussen]

>To an extent isn’t this because these types of benefits aren’t affordable? The pension, extra vacation, etc wouldn’t be possible without the tax revenue raised from your friends who are working more hours.

They just told you that their still making 10-20% less than colleagues in the private sector - when all benefits are factored in. So obviously those benefits are basically as affordable as employing someone at private sector type wages . Of course they are in Denmark, so the benefits for the private sector are also a lot better than you get in the U.S - at least for non-FAANG (I believe for FAANG as well but haven't researched)

[ampgt]

Sure, but if his friends had to work 20-30% more then there is an obvious disconnect.

Individual A and B both make $200k a year. Individual A made that by giving an hour long speech. Individual B made that by working all year. On paper they are treated the same, but their reality is drastically different. You can't just tell person B "you don't need to work so much." They wouldn't be at the same level as person A without having done so.

Everyone is different. Some people are insanely smart. Incredibly efficient. Ridiculously productive. For every person out there that is making as much as you and working less there is also someone working more and making less. "We don't need to work so much" is a privilege, and in my personal opinion, is unrealistic.

[stormdennis]

The reason why public sector jobs are so unproductive, imo, is because there are no real bosses. Everyone's an employee, all the way to the top. No one's remuneration is affected whether you do more or less, better or worse. The logical course for all concerned is to always take the path of least resistance. As long as the paperwork is in order there's nothing to worry about. And even if it's not, there are ways around that too. Best quote I ever heard from an government employee was an unopened letter often answers itself

[Ma8ee]

The public sector isn’t in general unproductive, except maybe in the US where one major party has been working hard to sabotage it for the last 40 years or so. What might surprise some people is that remuneration isn’t what foremost motivates , e.g., teachers or nurses.

Big companies are often as unproductive as the public sector, with whole departments often existing just to make some managers feel important.

[kashug]

This, so much this. I have been working as a cunsultant at both large companies and the public sector. And they are often unproductive - and for the same reasons. Loads of middle management that needs to be included in every decision-making, but noone that dares to actually make a decision without first asking their managers.

In my eyes, the reason much of the public sector is unproductive is not because it is not motivated by profit. But rather that it is too similar to large companies with loads different management-levels.

I once worked in the public sector when they embraced real autonomous teams with leaders that could actually make decisions when the team needed it. It was just as efficient as the best agile teams I have worked at in the private sector.

[nicoburns]

The real insight here (which you allude to) is that (all else being equal) large organisations are inherently inefficient. If you take the classic libertarian view that government is inefficient and extend the logic to apply to all large organisations (and indeed individuals who control large amounts of wealth) then you end up at a very interesting political position that can provide a unified critique of both modern capitalism and soviet style communism by explaining the failings of both as being due to concentration of power (state power in the case of communism, economic power in the case of capitalism).

[Ma8ee]

Neither is inherently inefficient. It’s just that both types of organisations can afford inefficiencies, while a small private company usually can’t afford it.

That doesn’t mean that small companies always are more efficiently run in all aspects. I expect my local McDonalds be much more efficient than the small sushi place around the corner, which can afford being inefficient due to low rent and probably close to minimum salary for the owner.

[mellavora]

My brother works in HR at a fairly high level at HUD. He reminds me that most large government agencies have to expect that 1/2 of their employees have below average talent and motivation. So they design many of their processes to function under this assumption.

While HUD is certainly less productive (per capita) than a small team of highly talented people, turns out that in most large organizations half the people are below average talent/motivation. And designing for this instead of pretending that all of your staff is above average allows them to have higher productivity.

[stormdennis]

That phenomenon is the reason old established big companies get disrupted. No one disrupts the public service, they are the permanent only business in their sector.

[nicoburns]

> No one disrupts the public service, they are the permanent only business in their sector.

That's not necessarily true. Governments frequently intervene in the running of public companies. Also, many public companies compete against privately run businesses.

[nybble41]

I think you misread. The "public service" here is a reference to the government, not to public companies (which are still privately-run businesses despite being listed on public stock exchanges).

Large private enterprises, publicly-traded or otherwise, that fall prey to inefficiency get disrupted. Governments do not get disrupted short of foreign invasion or revolution, so the inefficiency remains entrenched.

[nicoburns]

Actually, by "public companies" I meant "publicly owned/run companies". I can see now that this was poorly worded.

> Governments do not get disrupted short of foreign invasion or revolution

And also elections. This is especially true in countries that don't have a two-party system.

[rayiner]

> The public sector isn’t in general unproductive, except maybe in the US where one major party has been working hard to sabotage it for the last 40 years or so.

Do you realize that (1) half of all government spending is at the state and local levels; and (2) many states and cities have been run by “the other party” (not the bad one) for decades? Cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore, etc., have been run by Democrats for longer than many posters on HN have been alive. If there was any truth to the notion that the US public sector is poorly managed because “one major party” “sabotages” it you should see a marked difference in the states run by the other party. But you don’t. Indeed, the major population trend in the US is people leaving Democrat-run states and moving to Republican-run states.

[tl]

Last time I checked, more than the majority of what I pay in taxes go to the federal government, not state or local, where it is re-distributed to other parts of the country most of whom have elected representatives from "the other party" and whose disproportionate representation changed a national election.

[rayiner]

You're overlooking sales, property, and business taxes that folks don't see directly (e.g. property taxes built into rent), which go to the state and local governments. But overall, about half of all government spending in the U.S. is at the state and local levels: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/reg_cit_glance-2018-41-e....

For many of the things people complain about (transit, housing, education, policing) 90% of funding and 99% of oversight authority happens at the state and local level. Republicans in national government have pretty much zero say over say affordable housing policy in California. Trying to pin California's failures in those areas on Republicans in Kansas is specious.

[bhupy]

First of all, you're only talking about income taxes, which as you rightly pointed out are concentrated in the Federal government. Once you factor in property and sales taxes, the distribution is roughly 50-50.

Second of all, even if you only take into account income taxes, Federal income taxes aren't re-distributed to other parts of the country in the way that you think.

The biggest line items in the Federal budget is (in decreasing order) are:

- Social Security

- Medicare + Medicaid

- Defense

Social Security isn't really "distributed" to other parts of the country, it's mostly concentrated in regions where retirees happen to live. Ditto Medicare.

You could argue that Medicaid is "distributed", however it is funded by both States and the Federal government[1].

The comment to which you are replying is correct: most public sector services like education, electricity, water, sewage, libraries, law enforcement, fire departments, etc are all funded predominately at the state and local level.

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/federalstate-sh...

[knightofmars]

Under funding and subsequently under staffing federal organizations to "defang" them or to show them as being ineffective to support a position of reorganization and subsequent merger with another organization to alter who has oversight (as a power play) or to just remove them completely has been a long-time page in the political playbook. This is an sub element of the "starve the beast" approach and has been well documented [1]. To be clear, I'm not here to argue the efficacy of this approach but merely to point out it is real and is happening.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

[JamesBarney]

When rayiner says unproductive I think he means inefficient. And understaffing and budget cuts shouldn't drive efficiency lower, if anything they should drive it higher. Similar to how corporations get more efficient after layoffs.

[rayiner]

“Starve the beast” is a rhetorical boogeyman. Conservatives tried it, and we just decided to run a structural deficit instead. Nobody’s budget ever gets cut. CDC’s budget, for example, has tripled since 1992, adjusted for inflation.

But my point is, even if you think that phenomenon actually exists in practice rather than theory, shouldn’t Democrat-run state and local-level places be a counter-example? School, police, transit, etc. are all mainly state-level services. In places like Illinois and New York and California, it’s Democrats that set the taxes and Democrats that set the budgets and Democrats that oversee spending. In those places, you should see a marked difference between federal services (where big bad Republicans have a say) and state and local services (where it’s all controlled by a one-party Democratic system). But you don’t.

[tptacek]

I don't think the case you're trying to make is as clear as you want it to be. Most cities have mayoralties dominated by Democrats; Democrats are the urban party. Pennsylvania has bounced back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans for decades; people are leaving San Francisco because it's too successful. Chicago and Illinois are, to their detriment, run by a Democratic machine, but I think that's the best example you have, and it's not like there aren't basket case Republican states for me to rebut with.

[rayiner]

Whenever people point out how poorly government services are run everywhere in America, someone replies (like OP) that it’s because Republicans “sabotage” the operation of government. My point isn’t that Republicans could run it better; my point is that you can’t blame dysfunctional government on Republican “sabotage” when so many state and local government services controlled by Democrats is also dysfunctional.

We’re seeing this happen with police. Police funding and administration is almost entirely a local matter. If Chicago PD is running CIA-style interrogation sites (or what’s happening in Baltimore or Atlanta or Minneapolis) you can’t blame Republicans. If schools aren’t good or transit is bad, or housing is expensive, you can’t blame Republican “sabotage.”

It’s a perverse argument. It’s saying to disregard Democrats’ obvious failures to run government services—it would all be better if you just gave Democrats more power. (That is not to say that Republicans would run things better. For the most part, they wouldn’t even claim to, and would point to that as justification for doing less. My recently-red/trending purple Maryland county has pretty good government services, but mostly because it doesn’t try to do much.)

[tptacek]

That you are wrong about small pieces of this is what makes your comments interesting. :)

I take your broader point that it's unproductive to pin the productivity concerns of the public sector on Republicans; especially in state government, I probably agree with you in sort of assigning good governance and management to the GOP, and expanding public employment and benefit rolls to Democrats.

But, like, I think you'll have a hard time making the argument that run amok policing isn't at least somewhat attributable to Republican voters. It's not "sabotage", in the mostly-mythical Grover Norquist sense, but it's a public policy mistake they mostly own.

[bhupy]

You can massage the data to tell any story you want.

To your point about city mayoralties, on average, Republican-led metros have lower inequality and higher cost-of-living-adjusted incomes than Democrat-led metros[1][2].

There isn't really a strong correlation between successful government and the predominant governing party. What you'll find is that things are not so simple that you can pin all of our problems on a single party in a neatly packaged way.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-are...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/upshot/red-blue-diverging...

[Ma8ee]

> To your point about city mayoralties, on average, Republican-led metros have lower inequality and higher cost-of-living-adjusted incomes than Democrat-led metros[1][2].

Isn't it just that they are smaller and less successful?

[tptacek]

I agree, at least with regards to local politics.

[JamesBarney]

Are people leaving San Francisco because the city government is too successful? That doesn't seem to be my understanding from reading and talking to people from that city.

It seems to me the biggest reason people are leaving San Francisco seems to be the rent is too damn high which is a pretty straightforward effect of the city's housing policies.

I think it's pretty clear that the Republicans party doesn't have a monopoly on poorly run government at the city and state level. (At the federal level there does seem to be a large gap in the ability to govern between parties.)

[idlewords]

One small correction, which is that the housing crisis in SF is a function of the region's housing policies, not just the city's failures. Some of the governance problems here are just structural, that there's no one with authority to tell Palo Alto that they can't be a leafy suburb anymore and need to build high-rises.

[TheCoelacanth]

Local spending is generally where I see the most obvious productivity from government spending.

Local government spending is what educates the children, paves the roads, keeps my house from burning down or getting robbed, runs the parks and libraries, etc.

[dasudasu]

No need for the American exceptionalism here.

[arethuza]

"Everyone's an employee, all the way to the top"

A lot of established public companies are like that.

[stormdennis]

Yes and they wither away as a result then that's when layoffs happen and hostile takeovers etc

[arethuza]

Neither Apple or Microsoft are managed by the original founders - and they seem to be doing OK. I've worked for public companies that are pretty old (50+ years) and they had superb management.

[stormdennis]

They have both had to adjust to competitors along the way and faced disruption. Apple nearly looked like going out of business at one stage before they brought Jobs back. They operate in a world where the Mac and the iPhone have to compete with a major rivals. Microsoft have had to develop their Cloud business as Windows becomes less important. The Public Sector never needs to do anything like that.

[arethuza]

I'm not sure that my experience of the public sector and the private sector in the UK quite aligns with the ideological position that private sector automatically means better managed, better services and better motivated people.

In fact, the most insanely motivated people I've ever met were in the public sector.